Rey Ordonez goes through gloves faster than the Mets go through third basemen. PORT ST. LUCIE – Rey Ordonez walked into the Mets’ clubhouse the other day carrying a sideways stack of seven baseball gloves like a French accordion. Ordonez, who had just collected the gloves from his sportinggoods company, lifted up the chest door at the base of his locker and dumped the gloves inside for later use.

And they will get used. Unlike most shortstops around the league and in the history of the game, Ordonez goes through gloves faster than the Mets go through third basemen.

For the past two seasons Ordonez has been like some kind of infield alchemist, turning six or seven leather gloves into gold.

“I like the glove to be stiff,” Ordonez says, smacking his mitt and pushing at it to show how little flex there is. “I don’t like the glove to be too loose. The ball could go right under it.”

While most players cherish their glove like a virtuoso cherishes his violin, Ordonez is happy to use a glove for a month and then discard it for the next one in the foot of his locker.

Now a minor league infield coach with the Mets, Foli said that in his 15-year career he used two gloves, both of which he still owns. In fact, if Foli were to play today, he would bring one of those gloves out of the closet.

“If I had to, yeah,” Foli says. “One fits perfectly on my hand. I know it like I know my children.”

That’s how much a glove means to an infielder, who will work it, treat it, add oil, pound it with a bat, then bend, prod and fold it to his liking. Edgardo Alfonzo was crushed last winter when his “gamer,” a glove he had used for four years, was stolen in the Venezuelan winter league. This spring he has switched to a smaller second baseman’s glove, which he has been breaking in for the regular season.

Braves shortstop Walt Weiss is known to have one of the oldest, most decrepit gloves in all the major leagues. It looks like a refugee from the dead ball era, as if Honus Wagner might have used it early in his career – all flattened out, crusty and showing the new stitching and webbing that Weiss has added over the years to keep it together.

But it has fallen into such disrepair that Weiss is switching to a new glove for the first time since he left the A’s in 1992. Before a recent game Weiss took a reporter on a tour of his beloved glove, showing where he had to sew the fingers back together, how he had to redo the webbing several times, and most of all, how a huge hole in the palm is forcing him to make the switch.

Sometimes the ball gets caught under a flap of worn-away leather in the palm so that Weiss loses control of the ball. When told of Ordonez’ quick passage through his gloves, Weiss shook his head in amazement.

“Really?” he said. “Wow, that’s unusual.”

When it comes time to break out a new mitt, Ordonez usually will work it for three days before it becomes his gamer. Foli says when he played it would take about three-fourths of a season to break in a new one.

But gloves are different now, made of more supple horsehide, which breaks in quicker than the old cowhide mitts of yesteryear.

But even if it was made out of iron, Ordonez could still turn it into gold.